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jgill

['Member']Joined: November 29, 2019 at 04:56Last active: February 25, 2026 at 22:534 discussions4035 comments
Location: Colorado

Bio

Retired professor of mathematics from a branch of a state university. I've published some research but nothing of any real consequence. I continue to explore certain elementary dynamical systems in the complex plane because it's enjoyable to do so. My avocation was rock climbing.

Favourite Philosopher

Sartre, Oscar Eckenstein, Aleister Crowley, Geoffrey Winthrop Young

Favourite Quotations

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
(Wm Blake)

"I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head."

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

Discussions (4)

Comments

In: AI condemns Donald Trump  — view comment
As a historian of the sport of climbing I have noticed something similar. Phrasing a question a tad differently produces different values of various a...
February 13, 2026 at 22:51
In: Infinity  — view comment
Potential infinity in math logic is not the same as potential theory in mathematics. The latter concerns harmonic functions. My own perspective is inf...
February 10, 2026 at 23:39
In: Infinity  — view comment
Seems to be the case.
February 08, 2026 at 21:54
In: Infinity  — view comment
I can think of 1,2,3 as instantaneous, so also 1,2,3,... which makes the latter the same as N. What babble, but entertaining. :cool:
February 04, 2026 at 22:40
In: Infinity  — view comment
I'm not familiar with
February 04, 2026 at 22:34
In: Infinity  — view comment
Really? 0.999... = 1 ? Ask ChatGPT about the popularity of NSA. It is on target. Depends on whether the first symbolism is time dependent. Does counti...
February 04, 2026 at 22:15
In: Infinity  — view comment
OK. I see that "choice sequence" arises in mathematical constructivism. All these years and never came across it. Flipping a coin over and over.
February 04, 2026 at 01:34
In: Infinity  — view comment
Not at all. But philosophically examining mathematics requires knowing something of the subject. Otherwise it becomes a babble of word definitions. Ph...
February 03, 2026 at 22:39
In: Infinity  — view comment
I feel your pain, but it is the result of applying a philosophical approach to mathematics. Philosophers love to dwell in the past and compare one mas...
February 03, 2026 at 06:34
In: Infinity  — view comment
Keep up the good work!
February 01, 2026 at 22:08
In: Infinity  — view comment
There is a branch of mathematics called Numerical Analysis which, among other tasks, attempts to predict how far out one has to go in an infinite expa...
February 01, 2026 at 21:27
In: Infinity  — view comment
Good point. Does a typical mathematical sequence imply motion in time?
January 24, 2026 at 22:21
In: Infinity  — view comment
:joke: Oh oh, the set {1,2,3} has 3 numbers. :gasp:
January 19, 2026 at 02:53
In: Infinity  — view comment
As I have mentioned before, the interpretation I have used for years is that infinity means boundlessness, not a cardinal number. As for transfinite e...
January 15, 2026 at 00:26
In: The Death of Local Compute  — view comment
I once used VB6 to design and run programs on my computer, but one day it was gone from my computer, taken away by Microsoft. In its place was a cloud...
January 14, 2026 at 23:16
In: Infinity  — view comment
countable It all depends on how one defines "countable"
January 14, 2026 at 06:20
In: Infinity  — view comment
The sets {1,2,3,...} and {2,4,6,...} are in one to one correspondence, satisfying the acceptable mathematical notion of "same size". But what happened...
January 10, 2026 at 06:06
In: Is there anything that exists necessarily?  — view comment
(2+2)mod3=? There are theorems in math having hypotheses that are both sufficient and necessary. Just nit picking.
December 29, 2025 at 00:53
In: Merry Christmas and Good Luck!  — view comment
A really nice gesture. Happy holidays, my friend!
December 25, 2025 at 23:44
In: Let's quantify phenomenology!  — view comment
Reading this the first time, what comes to mind is a circle with a number of radii, each one a quality. Then a phenomenon corresponds to a curve on th...
December 03, 2025 at 23:43
In: Is there a right way to think?  — view comment
I, too, have this personal trait. Particularly in political conversations. But also as a mathematician, attempting to conjure up counterexamples befor...
November 19, 2025 at 03:45
In: Should People be Paid to Study, like Jobs?  — view comment
Of course I know what the Socratic method is. I encouraged dialogue you describe in my classes. But teaching math requires transmitting specific ideas...
November 16, 2025 at 05:16
In: Should People be Paid to Study, like Jobs?  — view comment
Oh, baloney. I got tenure and a full professorship fairly quickly while periodically publishing on virtually any topic I wished as a mathematician - c...
November 15, 2025 at 23:22
In: Why Not Nothing?_Answered  — view comment
In your mathematical analogies do you consider "0" to be nothing (in some sense)?
November 12, 2025 at 23:00
In: Ennea  — view comment
I chose 9 because it has a symbolic significance of finality. Explain, please.
November 01, 2025 at 21:04
In: How LLM-based chatbots work: their minds and cognition  — view comment
Pardon me for breaking in, but as a retired professional mathematician I have observed in short conversations with Chatgpt what I would otherwise gues...
October 29, 2025 at 05:15
In: What Difference Would it Make if You Had Not Existed?  — view comment
(From a personal perspective, someone would have come along a little later and advocated turning rock climbing into an athletic, gymnastic sport. No q...
September 15, 2025 at 23:45
In: What Difference Would it Make if You Had Not Existed?  — view comment
It's a little off topic, but Stanislaw Lem, the Polish SciFi author, had a theory of alternate histories that dealt with events rather than individual...
September 15, 2025 at 20:48
In: What Difference Would it Make if You Had Not Existed?  — view comment
The Butterfly Effect carried to unimaginable complexities. Nature is a fantastically intricate dynamic system. The effect of not being born moves both...
September 06, 2025 at 00:40
In: Psychological Impact of the Great Depression  — view comment
My father didn't know his father who died in a mining accident about 1912. Dad had several siblings but he was the only one to leave the coal mines be...
September 03, 2025 at 21:02
In: Psychological Impact of the Great Depression  — view comment
My mother, a Southern Belle from Alabama, and my father, from a coal mining town in PA, were both born in 1910. My father became an academic but in hi...
August 31, 2025 at 21:18
In: please advise me  — view comment
There may not be a lot of interest in the GD here. I was attracted to the thread because I was born during that time and have vague recollections from...
August 30, 2025 at 22:13
In: Psychological Impact of the Great Depression  — view comment
I insisted on custody of our 9 year old daughter. My ex wife spread her wings and did well, now married and retired. My daughter is business manager o...
August 30, 2025 at 04:55
In: Identification of properties with sets  — view comment
Pardon the intrusion. I haven't read all the posts. You have a set {1,3,5} , and then you have another set that has as elements the properties shared ...
August 29, 2025 at 23:45
In: Psychological Impact of the Great Depression  — view comment
I was born during the Great Depression. My parents became very frugal, and I have always been conservative in my wants and needs. Except my father wen...
August 29, 2025 at 22:29
In: What is a system?  — view comment
For what its worth I'll toss in a definition of a mathematical system: "A mathematical system consists of: A set or universe, U. Definitions: sentence...
August 23, 2025 at 22:14
In: Time_Distance_Dimension  — view comment
Are you talking about a series or a sequence? What is a bounded infinity?
August 20, 2025 at 01:32
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
You mean the sacred nature of OIZ ? This is a fundamental truth? This sounds more like a cult. One can appreciate the theories about the origins of th...
August 19, 2025 at 20:20
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
Astute of you. True. How does one argue against the magic of "0IZ" ?
August 19, 2025 at 04:32
In: Time_Distance_Dimension  — view comment
"Infinite series" caught my attention.
August 19, 2025 at 04:23
In: Time_Distance_Dimension  — view comment
You'll have to be more specific. Put this in math terms.
August 18, 2025 at 22:25
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
I am very old. I apologize, but when I read something like this I tend to fall asleep. Is this supposedly enlightening? Is there a Zen moment of Aha!!...
August 18, 2025 at 22:19
In: Bannings  — view comment
Very appropriate. It was trying keeping up with the many non-properties of nothingness.
August 17, 2025 at 20:51
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
Speculations about the nature of space go far beyond the well defined parameters of mathematics. You are on a mystical journey.
August 15, 2025 at 05:14
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
The origins of space and time are speculations, not facts. A mathematical "space" is a set of "points" and some sort of structure. With two points one...
August 14, 2025 at 22:20
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
Carry on. Beyond my bailiwick.
August 13, 2025 at 20:08
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
True enough. Like the Zen definitions, perhaps.
August 13, 2025 at 04:12
In: One Infinite Zero (Quote from page 13 and 14)  — view comment
I realize this is a kind of divine interpretation of one and zero, but tossing chaos into the mix is rather unpleasing to a mathematician. Nevertheles...
August 12, 2025 at 20:19
In: Get Creative!  — view comment
From an infinite composition of complex functions arises "Reproductive Universe". Entirely unpredictable - an example of weak emergence. https://uploa...
August 10, 2025 at 22:12
In: The Question of Causation  — view comment
There is an interesting mathematical model of cause/effect in compositions of functions. f\circ g(z)=f(g(z)) like a force field where one function sta...
July 30, 2025 at 03:38
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